Chapter 069

Chapter 69: Deep Dive

Yu Sheng guessed many things Little Red Riding Hood might ask for, most of them linked to a supernatural Domain. Even though she looked like a seventeen or eighteen year old girl, she was a professional Spirit Realm Detective. Whatever she needed should be professional. He was actually excited, since he also had to deal with the Otherworld. Treating this as shadowing a “junior senior” to gain experience would not be bad.

He was just nervous that he might not be able to do what she needed. If it was too hard, he would have to find a face saving way to muddle through.

Then, at a sidewalk café, he stared blankly at what she took out.

It was copying a high school math workbook.

A huge one.

Yu Sheng looked at the workbook, then at the short haired girl across from him, then back again, his eyes saying clearly that he did not understand.

It was hard, all right. If the answers were not printed in the back, this would be harder than fighting monsters in an Otherworld. If an Entity is tough, you can die a few times and still drag the body forward. Math is different. If you do not know it, you do not know it. Even if you drop dead and pop back up, you still do not know it.

Foxy held Irene and watched from the side, not understanding what was going on either.

“You stay here and copy this whole workbook for me. The answers are in the back. Your handwriting can be messy. It just needs to be filled,” Little Red Riding Hood said calmly, “then I’ll take Foxy to the mall next door to buy clothes. Oh, and give me some cash first. I did not bring much. I’ll bring the receipts back and settle up.”

Yu Sheng opened his mouth and finally managed to organize his words: “So the help is doing your homework? Is that okay?”

“It’s fine. I already finished it once, but an Entity ripped it up, and my teacher didn’t believe me,” Little Red Riding Hood looked frustrated, but when she looked at Yu Sheng, her eyes showed relief, the happiness of being saved, “I came to buy a new workbook and was ready to stay up late. I didn’t expect to meet you.”

“My handwriting is not like yours. Even if I try to copy your style, the teacher will notice,” Yu Sheng said with a bitter face.

“It’s fine. They won’t look that closely,” she waved, “I’m already better than some. At least I wrote it myself the first time. Some classmates have other people do it from the start.”

“Okay,” Yu Sheng sighed and accepted that the world rarely unfolds the way he expects. He stood, pulled out his wallet, and handed it to her. Then he turned to Foxy: “Go with her. If you don’t understand something, ask her. Take Irene. If anything happens, contact me through Irene.”

Foxy looked at Little Red Riding Hood and seemed a bit uneasy, but she still nodded gently when she heard Yu Sheng’s instructions.

Little Red Riding Hood paused for a beat as she took the wallet. Her eyes flicked up and she joked: “So you’re giving me the money and the person. Aren’t you afraid I’ll run?”

Yu Sheng was already bowing his head over the workbook. He glanced up: “Are you never going near any Door again?”

Her face tightened all at once, the corner of her mouth twitching: “That’s a little scary, you know.”

“This workbook is scarier,” Yu Sheng sighed, “I never thought I’d face high school homework again like this. We didn’t have this much back when I was in school.”

Little Red Riding Hood grabbed Foxy’s hand and backed away fast, waving with her other hand: “We’re going to buy clothes.”

Foxy paused, then lifted Irene and waved at Yu Sheng a bit shyly. She wanted to wave her other hand, but Little Red Riding Hood had it.

Even from a few meters away, Yu Sheng could see Irene baring tiny teeth in a secret grin.

…

After passing through layer after layer of security doors and airlocked compartments, Song Cheng felt like he was crawling through the belly of a huge beast poured from steel and concrete. After several checkpoints, he finally reached his target.

At the bright end of an underground corridor stood a heavy alloy gate. Armed Special Affairs Bureau guards guarded both sides. Dense, complex lines were carved across the door, dizzying at a glance. A green sign above glowed with steady light. It read: “Deep Dive Zone D2 Submergence Port.”

Song Cheng took out his ID card and swiped it at a reader marked “Customs Check.” As the door opened, the scene beyond came into view.

A slightly warped light screen covered the inner side of the gate. Through it, he saw a very wide hall under bright lights. Many large devices like “Tanks” stood in neat rows. Each Tank was a three meter square container, set on a complex black metal base, and filled with a pale blue liquid.

People in white uniforms moved between the Tanks, checking readouts and status boxes.

Song Cheng stepped through the gate.

As he passed the warped screen, he felt brief weightlessness and vertigo, followed by a few seconds of ringing in his ears. When it faded, a gentle system voice sounded in his headset: “Now entering D2 Submergence Port. The overall Deep Dive Zone is currently located at Pa Ning III Station. Hall average depth: L 1. Environment: stable.”

He shook his head to clear the last of the dizziness, then walked straight toward several Tanks aligned nearby.

A figure in a white suit with gray white hair tied into a ponytail was already there.

“Director,” Song Cheng hurried over, surprised, “you came in person?”

“This has never happened before,” Bai Li Qing turned, her colorless eyes landing on him, “your team is ready.”

Song Cheng nodded and looked at the six Tanks in front of him.

Six fully equipped Deep Divers were being lowered by robotic arms into the containers. They wore black Powered Armor. Sealed helmets hid their faces, with dark red monitors faintly pulsing across the visor. Each carried an extra Micro Reactor Pack on the back to power mind shields and special observation and recording gear.

The arms lowered them from above until they hung in the pale blue liquid. A moment later, a soft hum rose from the Tank bases, low at first, then building.

A voice on the hall speaker said: “Configuring Deep Sea environment. All personnel, prepare to submerge. Umbilical Cord ready. Awaiting manual command.”

A technician watched the numbers stream across a handheld screen. After a few seconds, he called out: “Connect the Umbilical Cord.”

White coated staff stepped up and keyed commands for each Tank.

The pale liquid rippled. From the Tank bottoms, tube like things of black metal rose up, jointed like spines with dim red light flickering between the segments. They swam through the liquid as if alive, reached forward, and locked onto each Deep Diver’s chest.

The speaker sounded again: “Umbilical Cord connected. Inducer injection. Begin submergence.”

Waves rolled inside each Tank. The pale blue liquid seemed to turn into seawater in a blink, or rather, each Tank became a small cutout taken from some great ocean, all surging together at a set rhythm.

In the next second, all the Deep Divers vanished from Song Cheng’s sight. Only the Umbilical Cords linked to their armor still floated where the bodies had been, rising and falling, hinting that the Divers were still there in the Tanks, only hidden from those outside.

“Will this work? What will they see?” Bai Li Qing looked at Song Cheng.

“The Inducer drops them into the Spirit Realm. It works well for certain types of Otherworlds, especially the ones that use mind, dreams, or emotion as their doorway,” Song Cheng shook his head, “but Night Valley is special. We still don’t have a stable way in. With the Inducer, observers can only see a shadow of it in hallucinations. Now there’s been a mutation, and even Passenger 22 doesn’t know the details. I suspect the Divers will come back with nothing.”

Bai Li Qing nodded.

Song Cheng was about to say more when a sharp whine stabbed the air.

“Contamination!” a technician jumped like a spring and rushed to the big red emergency stop, shouting, “Pull them back.”

The button slammed down. Harsh noise burst from the bottom of each Tank. The pale liquid drained almost in an instant. Sparks danced along the Umbilical Cords. In the next second, all six Deep Divers snapped back into sight in the real world. They tumbled onto the Tank floors, bodies curling. One ripped open his visor and leaned out to vomit hard. Another staggered up, lurched to the Tank wall, and pounded a fist against the reinforced polymer, trying to yell something to the people outside.

Song Cheng and Bai Li Qing hurried over.

“We reached the end of the passage,” the standing Deep Diver shouted. Through the safety wall of the Tank, his voice sounded warped and thin, “the end of the passage. A beam of light. No Night Valley. None. At the end of the passage there were only… only… only math problems. All of them were full length problems. Every single one.”